The Tempest: A Philosopher-Poet Educating Citizens

Abstract

The Tempest is the only play of Shakespeare named after a natural phenomenon, but the phenomenon turns out to be not natural at all.Like most everything else in the play, from beginning to end, the tempest is brought about in accordance with a single character’s plan and deeds. In this the play most resembles the Platonic dialogues, though its central character, Prospero, who indeed spent a great deal of time studying “the liberal arts” instead of ruling Milan, does not engage in Socratic dialectic. His situation is such that his efforts are wholly bent on his and his daughter’s return to an Italy from which they have been exiled, and the securing of a promising marriage of his daughter to the heir apparent to Naples, whose king has, in league with Prospero’s brother, usurped Prospero’s rule of Milan. To achieve this end, Prospero must engage in the education of the many different characters in the play; the question of what is the best, and the best means to achieve, moral and political education is thus one of the two great themes of the play. The other is the related question of who should rule, which is posed loudly and clearly in the dramatic opening and informs every subsequent scene. The play’s magical quality is accounted for by powers that Prospero has by some accident acquired and which he renounces at the successful conclusion of what he calls his “project” (5.1.1; cf. Epilogue, 12). But whatever the source of those powers, his use of them is determined by his wisdom, which includes knowledge of the prerequisites and means of the moral education of human beings. That wisdom turns out to be incomplete, however, and finds its necessary complement through the observation of the actions of his (nonhuman) slave, Caliban. In the Epilogue, we are prompted to reflect on the relation between the “project” of the philosopher poet Prospero and that of Shakespeare himself, in his education of both citizens and potential philosophers.